Supply Chain Management. Green Supply Chain - Essay Example

quirements are changing (economy, customers demand, competition, legal regulations etc.), this affects companies’ internal and external processes as well as they need to increase attention to their Environmental Management (EM) and to create environmentally friendly strategies for the green supply chain. In other words, green supply chain is a growing trend among companies worldwide as part of their customer responsibility effort to weave environmentally sound practices into their business operations (Barnett 2011).

The main factors leading to the green supply chain are the following: 1. The most obvious factor is environmental concern, the details include: CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) Emissions. Companies are reducing their carbon footprint to the effort of mitigating pollution with the ultimate objective of keeping carbon emissions within the regenerative capacity of ecosphere. This is aligned in the consideration of the growing number of customers who are now conscious of the environmental practice of business enterprise, coupled with the benefit that effective green supply chain management can, in fact, increase operational efficiency and reduce operational cost that made green supply chain a business imperative (Zhu, 2012).

Oil Spills (Pollution), Land Degradation and Energy include other environmental factors of concern. 2. The second factor is: Green Product Demand Accenture Company did a survey of 250 senior executives in 8 foreign markets in such countries as US, Germany, UK, France, China, Brazil and India. The figure below shows that the most important reason for a company to use a sustainable supply chain is caused by the customers’ expectations. Table1. Factors leading to Green Supply Chain (Accenture Consultancy, 2012). 3. Costs For example in 2009, Coca Cola.

It provides eco-efficiency by distributing goods with reduced consumption of materials, thus, helping in maintaining the environment. Some food products require temperature managed environments for various types of food ingredients and require separate supply. MOS Burger, a Japan-based burger chain, has employed such trucks that have three temperature belts to attend to varied freezing, refrigeration and normal.